It’s not at all surprising that Sony is indicating there will be no advance screenings (at least not for mainstream press in NYC) for next week’s “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance,” a sequel to a film that inspired serious critical bloodshed (and vicious attacks on star Nicolas Cage).

But why isn’t Fox screening the new 3-D version of “Star Wars: Episode 1 — The Phantom Menace,” the studio’s No. 2 domestic grosser of all time (not adjusted for inflation)?

You’d probably have to ask producer-director George Lucas, who is paying Fox to distribute his self-financed sequel and can demand pretty much anything he wants. I’d guess he’s still smarting from his original reviews in 1999 and especially complaints against his most notorious character, Jar Jar Binks, reviled by some as a racist caricature. The only reliable-sounding review of the new version I can find — from Gizmodo Australia — indicates that Jar Jar unfortunately hasn’t been digitally erased by his creator, who we all know loves to tamper with his old films.

When the original 2-D “Phantom Menace” opened in May 1999, it achieved the apparently unique distinction of getting four reviews from the New York Post. I was still toiling as metropolitan editor at the time, so the reviews were written by my predecessor Rod Dreher, as well as by the inimitable reviewers Jonathan Foreman and Thelma Adams. None of them were terribly enthusiastic, so the editor of The Post’s entertainment section (later to merged with the “women’s pages” for what we now know as Pulse) Jon Podhoretz, also weighed in. Here, from a century far, far away are our original reviews:

Published: 05/18/99

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MECHANICAL, SAYS JONATHAN FOREMAN

In an era when audiences all but expect filmmakers to work miracles of illusion, ‘The Phantom Menace” is an amazing technical achievement. So it is all the more unfortunate that gazing in wonder at the products of George Lucas’ imagination and technical skill is the greatest pleasure provided by this fourth, least story-driven movie in the ‘Star Wars” series.

The first bad sign is in the opening crawl, which explains the political situation. In the first movie, it was simple stuff about rebels fighting an evil empire. In the fourth, the problem is a dull-sounding dispute about tax and trade between the planet Naboo and something called the Trade Federation.

It has led to a blockade of the planet by the Federation’s ships, and two Jedi Knights, Qui Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) and Obi Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) have been sent by the Chancellor of the Republic to sort out the situation.

But as they arrive on the Federation leaders’ ship, the traders are embarking on an invasion of Naboo. The two knights find their way to the planet’s surface as the forces of young Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman) are overwhelmed by legions of war ‘droids. They rescue her from her alien captors and flee on a ship to the semi-outlaw desert planet Tatooine. There they encounter slave boy Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd) and his mother, played by Danish actress Pernilla August.

It soon becomes clear that The Force is unusually strong with the boy and Qui Gon resolves to get him off the planet and train him as a knight. Meanwhile, evil in the tiger-faced form of Darth Maul and his shadowy master are looking for the Queen.

There’s a stirring race between what look like jet-propelled go carts, and an exciting climactic sword fight. But you know exactly how both will end, because there isn’t a surprise to be found anywhere in the movie.

That is not just because it’s a prequel and you know that Anakin will have to get out of slavery on Tatooine so that he can eventually become Darth Vader, or that you know that Obi Wan Kenobi must survive all three of the new movies. It’s that everything is signalled and formulaic.

Besides Neeson, who invests his Samurai character with just the right note of rueful wisdom, the brighter spots are: Watto the blue-faced, unshaven, winged alien trader; Ian McDiarmid as the sinister Senator Palpatine; and Portman, who is fine when she gets to talk in her own accent and to go without Kabuki-style makeup intended to be reminiscent of Elizabeth I. McGregor seems preoccupied by the effort to reproduce Alec Guinness’ accent.

To add insult to injury, Lucas’ directorial attention is clearly not focused on the cast, most of whom seem slightly adrift. It is spent instead on the effects.

And the weird, New-Agey anti-democratic politics have become more pronounced. For all the talk of republics and senates, more than ever the good guys in the ‘Star Wars” universe are queens, princesses, viceroys and knights: all folks who have inherited power or position.

TIRESOME, SAYS ROD DREHER

Everything grumpy cineastes have always said about the ‘Star Wars” movies – that they substitute special-effects bombast for actual storytelling – is thoroughly and depressingly true about ‘The Phantom Menace.” It plays like a long Industrial Light and Magic demo reel, which is a pretty amazing thing, but not a real movie. Everything about this film is so mechanical you wonder if it was written, directed and acted by ‘droids.

When a new ‘Star Wars” movie gives you a fresh appreciation for the emotional grandiloquence of ‘Return of the Jedi,” you know – to quote an actual phrase uttered in ‘Phantom” by (natch) the unbearable Jar Jar Binks – it’s in ‘deep doo doo.”

‘The Phantom Menace” is the first of a new ‘Star Wars” trilogy whose point is to show us how Jedi knight Anakin Skywalker, the galaxy’s long-prophesied messiah, became Darth Vader. Two Jedi, Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson, grim and dull) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor, restrained and dull) are sent out as light-sabered Kissingers to defuse a war between the Trade Federation and the peaceful planet of Naboo.

They fail, of course, and Naboo is invaded by the Trade Federation’s insectoid ‘droid army (something NATO no doubt wishes it had at its disposal). Having acquired a revoltingly goofy sidekick, the computer-generated Jar Jar Binks, the Jedi duo spirit Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman, radiantly dull) and her retinue off to Tatooine.

There they encounter Anakin (Jake Lloyd, lousy and dull), a tow-headed slave boy, born of a virgin (!). ‘There’s something about this boy,” Qui-Gon says. Would that there were. Here’s a lad who may be the prophesied galactic messiah, but who has a demon seed, yet he comes across as entirely blank, without the slightest hint of darkness. Mrs. Cleaver sending the Beav off to school generates more pathos than Anakin’s mom (Pernilla August) saying farewell forever to her son.

This ‘pre-quel” business means Lucas has painted himself into a storytelling corner. We know Anakin has to be freed to go off with the Jedi, which takes all the suspense out of the terrifically staged chariot race the kid runs, with his liberty at stake. This same fated conclusion also dejuices the film’s only other rousing scene, Qui-Gon’s light-saber showdown with the devil-faced Darth Maul (Ray Park), of whom we see far too little. This movie nearly dies for want of a villain.

This is the first ‘Star Wars” movie Lucas has directed since the original, and also the first he has written entirely solo since then. Boy, does it show. His timing is off; the movie nearly stops cold on several occasions, as Lucas laboriously lays out the back story and yadda-yaddas about ersatz Jedi mythology. What he ought to have been doing is writing dialogue actual people might speak, and for that matter, creating actual people (or Hutts, whatever) on screen. Result: this pre-quel is Nyquil.

There aren’t enough superlatives to describe the production design. The space battles are phenomenal, the various planetary cities, particularly the entirely urban planet of Coruscant, with its hive-like senate chamber, are literally breathtaking. Unfortunately, this only highlights how thin the drama and characterization are and bears out what has long been the rap on Lucas as a filmmaker: that he cares more about digital effects than people.

Where have you gone, Han Solo? A critic turns his jaundiced eyes to you.

Among the non-humans, alien sidekick Jar Jar Binks is as annoying as Barney, but he’ll appeal to ‘Star Wars” primary audience: kids. Pumpkin-headed villain Darth Maul makes less of an impression than a ‘Hellraiser” extra.

And yet, the pre-quel’s overblown pleasures nearly counter the shortcomings. The adrenalized pod race recalls Lucas’ ‘American Graffiti” in outer space; an underwater sequence highlighted by the line ‘there’s always a bigger fish” wonderfully weds live action and computer artistry. The intergalactic senate set where the evil corporate Federation out-maneuvers the bureaucratic Republic is eye candy.

‘Menace”s’ greatest weakness is that outcast-turned-big-fish Lucas has lost touch with the times. The original trilogy offered mainstream audiences alienated from the bible an updated creation myth. He offered New-Age theology cribbed from Joseph Campbell and Carlos Casteneda through a Saturday-matinee delivery vehicle.

The resulting Yodaism created an accessible battlefield for good and evil in an era when morality had become relative. Twenty years and countless millions later, Lucas’s evil business versus zen humanism message seems a tad hypocritical.

CAPTIVATING, SAYS JOHN PODHORETZ

ENOUGH with the whiny movie critics complaining about the new ‘Star Wars” movie. Like them, I was fully prepared to hate the thing when I arrived at the screening, but that prejudice was overcome by the movie’s wondrous look and by its fascinating, multilayered plot. ‘The Phantom Menace” takes twists and turns you don’t expect.

It’s true, as many have complained, that the characters in ‘The Phantom Menace” don’t really touch the heart. But people have always been beside the point in ‘Star Wars.”

The emotional centers of the first movie were the robots. The only moment you really felt bad in the original was when R2D2 got shot.

The standout performer in ‘The Empire Strikes Back” was Yoda the muppet. With the exception of Harrison Ford getting frozen in carbon in ‘The Empire Strikes Back,” did anybody really care about these characters?

No, and nobody’s going to care about ‘The Phantom Menace” characters either – though the movie is well-acted, unlike its predecessors.

What’s stunning about ‘The Phantom Menace” is the visual storytelling, and there are literally dozens of eye-popping moments – a heart-stopping high-speed race through a desert, a three-man sword fight, a planet that’s one gigantic city all around and another that looks like a high-tech Tuscany.

‘The Phantom Menace” is actually about something – the collapse of a democracy. The democracy in question is the Galactic Republic, which has become a hollow shell, owing to the endless and pointless debates in its senate. (The scene featuring the senate in windbaggy debate is particularly well-conceived.)

The war of this ‘Star Wars” – the takeover of the planet Naboo by a bunch of rogue traders and the efforts of the Jedi knights to recover it – is a fascinating piece of business because it is part and parcel of the movie’s complex political drama.

The movie does resonate with its predecessors in interesting and touching ways. It returns to the desert planet of Tatooine, where Luke Skywalker grew up in the first ‘Star Wars,” in a sequence that helps explain all sorts of questions – who the obese villain Jabba the Hut really is and why all those bad characters were hanging around the cantina in the original.

We see the robot C-3PO being constructed, and see a younger, more energetic Yoda. Most touching of all, we get to see the young Anakin Skywalker – a good-hearted little boy who we know, to our sorrow, will somehow end up being seduced by evil and becoming Darth Vader.

While the central comic character, a lizard-like layabout with a Jamaican accent named Jar-Jar Binks, seems to have been designed to delight small children exclusively, there are other wonderfully designed creatures on hand – I especially liked Anakin’s slavemaster, a compulsive gambler who looks like a giant purple wasp.

George Lucas claims he waited to make this movie until the special effects made it possible, and there’s more of everything in ‘The Phantom Menace” – the effects are so seamless that it’s almost easy to take them for granted. But if the movie has a problem, it’s not that there’s too little story, but that there’s too much.

There’s more of everything in this movie – two good guys (played well by Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor), two bad guys (the new character Darth Maul and a hooded fellow whose identity I won’t reveal), two gorgeous young queens (both played by Natalie Portman), three major cities, four planets, and several Machiavellian subplots. It gets a little hard to follow.

Forget the hype, and the backlash. ‘The Phantom Menace” is captivating.